


Main Quest: Act I

by hashtag_anthems



Series: Voltron Skyrim AU [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Season 2 spoilers, Skyrim AU, blacksmith hunk, canon typical violence for skyrim, definitely going to be more violent than voltron, dragonborn keith, imperial cadet lance, imperial officer shiro, stealth mage pidge, theres no ships just a lot of fighting bears and trying to keep pidge from getting arrested, updates will be sporadic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-28 07:45:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10079978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hashtag_anthems/pseuds/hashtag_anthems
Summary: Keith didn't know that dragonborn was a thing that people still were. After narrowly escaping execution and a dragon attack, he finds out that he, along with this ragtag team of adventurers, are destined to save the world.It's a Skyrim AU.





	1. Unbound

**Author's Note:**

> A post once referred to the Blade of Marmora as The Blades, and then this happened.

_Started: Unbound_

 

            The world was turned sideways when Keith woke up. Head throbbing, he blinked until his vision cleared enough for him to make out the grimy face of a Stormcloak soldier sitting across from him. He was on a wagon. His hands were tied, and as he straightened up and the world stopped spinning for two seconds, the Stormcloak addressed him.

            “You’re finally awake.”

            He remembered trying to cross the border, and getting caught by the Imperial army along with a handful of rebels. The fact that he was coming from the Imperial City didn’t seem to matter. Maybe if he could prove he wasn’t with the Stormcloaks, claim he hadn’t known that he was crossing the border, then they would let him go.

            The Stormcloak was talking to one of their fellow prisoners now, a man dressed in rags who was making it quite clear that he wasn’t with the rebellion. It didn’t matter. They were all headed for the block anyway.

            “…what day is it?” he finally asked, voice rough from who knew how many days of disuse.

            The Storkcloak gave him an odd look, but informed him that it was Morndas, the 17th of Last Seed. Keith was sure he hadn’t heard him correctly. That would mean that not only had he been unconscious for at least a full day, but that he was supposed to be halfway across Skyrim by now. If he was going to find out what this… ‘arrival’ was that he heard about, then he needed to be far away from…

            “Where are we going?” He didn’t see any signs pointing to the nearest cities, but he could see a stone tower peeking over the trees down the road. There was only a light dusting of snow on the ground, and the air wasn’t that cold yet, so they couldn’t be too far north. Maybe Falkreath or the Rift, at most.

            “End of the line, so what does it matter to you?” This seemed to distress the man in rags.

            “Can’t I at least know where I’m about to die?” Keith snapped.

            “Imperial stronghold in Helgen,” the Stormcloak grumbled.

            “If it wasn’t for you Stormcloaks, I could have stolen that horse and been halfway to Hammerfell by now…” the other man complained.

            From what Keith could recall, Helgen wasn’t a particularly big settlement. As they drew closer to the city, he could see that it wasn’t particularly small either. Escape might be possible…

            When the carriages stopped and they started lining up the prisoners, Keith couldn’t see any route of escape that wasn’t heavily guarded. Maybe if he could get his hands on a weapon, he could get out. Surely one Imperial citizen running loose in Skyrim wasn’t their biggest concern…

            As soon as the horse thief tried to run, he had four arrows in his back to show for it. Running was not an option.

            “Anyone else?” The Imperial Captain overseeing this execution almost dared anyone else to try and make a run for it. Nobody moved. She motioned for the soldier standing next to her, probably a new recruit from the look of him, to proceed, and he pointed straight at Keith.

            “What’s your name?” He asked, and Keith could tell that he was putting more confidence than he probably had into the question.

            “Keith Kogane,” he grumbled, stepping forward. The soldier glanced over the list, brow furrowed, and held it up for the Captain to see.

            “What do I do? He’s not on the list.”

            “Forget the damn list, Lance. They all go to the block.” The Captain then left him to continue making sure all of the prisoners were accounted for, and Keith was led to stand with the rest of the prisoners lined up to be executed.

            Beheading was supposedly a pretty easy way to go, but that didn’t stop Keith from desperately looking for some way to get out of here. The rebels wouldn’t let the priestess they brought get through their last rites, and before he knew what was happening, one of them was already dead.

            The echoes of a loud roar reached the town and at least delayed the inevitable for a few moments while the soldiers tried to figure out where it came from.

            “You! The Imperial. You’re next.” This was it. He was going to die.

            One of the soldiers prodded him forward and another one practically pinned him to the block, head turned sideways so he could see the headsman raising his axe. There was still fresh blood dripping off of it, and Keith found himself muttering the name of every Divine he could remember. Nothing short of a miracle would get him out of this.

            There was another roar as soon as the axe started to swing towards him, and the ground shook so hard that the headsman stumbled back a step. The sentries weren’t reporting anything nearby, but Keith had a perfect view of the enormous, winged… something that landed on top of the tower in front of them. Someone yelled something about a dragon, but there hadn’t been a dragon spotted in…

            A shockwave spread across the city, scattering the soldiers and Stormcloaks, and knocking Keith to the ground. His vision went fuzzy for a second, but it cleared just in time for him to roll to his feet and narrowly avoid a blast of fire from the dragon. He ran for the nearest shelter, which happened to be another tower with a group of rebels huddled inside. As soon as one of them tried to run up the stairs to find another way out, a giant, clawed wing punched through the stone wall like it was made of tissue and knocked the man off the staircase. When the dragon flew to another perch, one of the Stormcloaks told Keith that if he jumped, he could make it to the inn and it was a clear shot out of the city.

            It had only taken a few minutes for half the fort to go up in flames. By the time he got to the ground, there were bodies littering the roads and most of the houses had been burned to the foundation.

            He had to keep moving. Standing here in the open was practically begging that dragon to attack him. The only building that could still be considered standing was the keep, and a single Imperial soldier seemed to have the same idea as him.

            “Come on, I know how to get into the keep. There’s a passageway that leads out of the city.” Keith couldn’t be sure with the helmet covering most of the soldier’s face, but it sounded like… “Come on, hurry up if you don’t want to get eaten by a dragon!”

            He followed the soldier down a side road, narrowly getting himself impaled on one of the dragon’s claws when it landed on the city wall, and they both took a chance and sprinted across the open space between them and the keep while the dragon was occupied with some of the other soldiers.

            Once inside, the battle (if such a one-sided slaughter could even be called that) outside faded away, and they only occasionally heard the dragon roar. The soldier took off his helmet, trying to catch his breath, and Keith recognized him as the same one with the list. “You’re Keith, right?”

            “Yeah…” Keith was pretty sure someone had said this guy’s name, but to his credit, he was almost executed about five minutes ago, so if he didn’t remember one Imperial soldier’s name, he couldn’t be completely at fault. He looked like an elf, if the pointed ears were anything to go by.

            “I’m Lance. Let me see if I can get those ropes off.”

            “You’re… going to let me go?”

            “You weren’t on the list, I don’t see why Captain Montgomery was so intent on having you killed,” Lance dismissed the question. “If we go a little further in, they’ll probably have some extra armor and weapons.”

            The keep was eerily silent the further in they went. Keith did find a set of Imperial armor, a bit worn but better than nothing, and a sword that would last him until he could get out of here. He blamed the invasive quiet on the fact that he and Lance might have screamed when they found another living person in one of the soldiers’ living quarters.

            They couldn’t have been older than maybe a teenager, and from the look of them they were probably a Dark Elf. Something blue was glittering in their hand, and their feet were definitely glowing blue. Their robes seemed somewhat familiar, but Keith couldn’t quite place where he would have seen them. He didn’t tend to hang around mages.

            “Hey, we’ve got to get out of here. There’s a dragon attacking outside.” As if to prove Lance’s point, the dragon roared once more and some dust shook loose from the ceiling. It must have landed nearby.

            “What do you think I’m trying to do?” the mage snapped. “I was in here when the damn thing attacked and all the soldiers went outside to fight it.”

            “Well, I know a way out, keep up if you want to live.” Lance went through another doorway and left Keith and the mage to follow. While the three of them walked in silence, Keith couldn’t let go of how familiar something about this kid was. “So, mage, you got a name?”

            “…Pidge.”

            “Well, Pidge, I’m Lance and the grump in dire need of a haircut over there is Keith. I know a way out of here, if you want to join us.”

            Pidge didn’t seem to have a problem with getting out of here alive, so they agreed to tag along.

            The dragon must have been attacking the keep now, because they occasionally ran into a caved-in section of wall (and once witnessed one that was accompanied by a vicious roar from the dragon outside).

            “Wait, I think I heard someone up ahead.” Lance stopped them, and while Keith reached for the sword he had picked up earlier, Pidge snuffed out the shimmering blue spell in one hand and conjured up a small fireball. “Geez guys, I didn’t mean we’re gonna attack them. Just… don’t go barging in there.”

            Keith begrudgingly put away his weapon, but Pidge insisted on at least keeping a spell readied just in case. When they found the source of the noise Lance had heard, they were finally convinced and extinguished the spell. A young man, probably around Keith’s age, and Redguard if he had to guess, looked like he was trying to hide in an old supply room. “Hunk? What are you doing here?” Lance went to help the guy to his feet, and Keith lost track of Pidge until they were across the room, rummaging through some barrels.

            Introductions were made, and apparently this “Hunk” guy was an old friend of Lance’s. He worked for his uncle, the blacksmith in the next town over, and he usually handled the deliveries when the Imperial army ordered more weapons from them. He knew his way around a sword, but his talents lay mostly in forging them. He had no problem with accompanying them out of the keep, and getting as far away from Helgen and that dragon as possible.

            All of them were hesitant to attack the Stormcloaks that they encountered, but the rebels didn’t have any reservations about cutting them down. Keith hadn’t known that Pidge kept a dagger on them. That was something he felt a lot better finding out about while they were still on the same side.

            “So where are we actually going? If we’re trying to get out, shouldn’t we be going upstairs, not down?” Keith asked once he noticed that they were facing yet another staircase leading further down into the keep.

            “There’s an old passage that they’ve tried to keep boarded up since the wall caved in a while back. I’ve had to guard it more times than I care to admit. The frostbite spiders keep trying to get inside.” Lance spoke with the resentment of a man personally wronged in life. “I scouted it out once, and it drops off right on the road to Riverwood.”

            “That seems a little… convenient,” Pidge muttered.

            “Who knows? They built most of the lower levels in this keep into an existing cave system so they didn’t have to dig it all out. Maybe more Imperial forts should come with emergency exits.” Lance waved to the foot of the stairwell. “Uh, but we will have to cut through the torture chamber. Hopefully they aren’t using it…”

            From the sound of it, they were using it.

            Lance handled talking to the Imperial torturer and his assistant while the rest of them tried to ignore the pervasive metallic scent to the air and the rather… fresh corpse of a mage lying in one of the cages. Keith caught Pidge sneaking a few lockpicks into her pocket, but didn’t say anything about it.

            Keith actually recognized one of the prisoners locked in the cells in the hallway beyond. Apparently, so did Pidge and Lance.

            “Shiro, is that you?” The man in the cell was groggy, but he blinked a few times before squinting at Keith.

            “You joined the army?”

            “What? No, I—I’ll explain later.” He tested the cell door and found it locked (and why wouldn’t it be, it’s a jail cell, not a come-and-go-whenever-you-please cell).

            “I got this.” Pidge slipped between him and the door, producing one of their lockpicks and opening the cell door in a few seconds. Keith made a mental note that having a sneak on the team might be a good idea after all.

            It took Lance and Keith both to help Shiro to his feet, and Keith wondered what had him so out of it. He was an Imperial officer, it didn’t make sense for them to lock him up and drug him like this. Lance seemed to have similar questions, but he didn’t raise them.

            The most trouble they ran into after that was the nest of frostbite spiders that Lance had complained about earlier and a sleeping bear. Pidge dispatched the spiders pretty quickly, but they also insisted on collecting some venom from at least one of the spiders before they moved on. Lance actually took care of the bear, and Keith would admit that he was impressed with the guy’s ability with a bow. By the time they reached the cave’s exit, Shiro even seemed to be coming around.

            Overall, Keith would consider not getting executed or eaten by a dragon a success.

 

_Completed: Unbound_

_Started: Before the Storm_


	2. Before the Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our heroes make it safely to Riverwood, and Hunk's tendency to give a good "I told you so" runs in the family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said updates were going to be sporadic. I... didn't anticipate this taking so long. I have a working outline now tho, so hopefully I can update again before three months have passed.

_Started: Before the Storm_

                Hunk’s uncle was a pretty cheerful guy, considering a dragon had just flown over the town and nobody believed him about it.

                “I knew what I saw,” he insisted, and Keith nodded for lack of a better response. “I knew that it was a dragon flying over the city, and then you lot show up with news of a dragon attack. I knew it!”

                Keith had never actually been to Skyrim before, and he only knew a handful of things about the region before he decided to leave Cyrodiil. One of those things was that there hadn’t been a dragon spotted in Skyrim since the First Era. From what he had gathered, according to Hunk’s uncle and the others he had briefly encountered in Riverwood, the return of the dragons had been written off as a myth. The dragon that destroyed Helgen was no myth. Unfortunately, nobody happened to remember the part of the myth where the dragons get defeated.

                “So, nobody here knows how to kill a dragon?”

                “Well, dragons die just like everything else, if you can manage to hit ‘em. The problem is that nobody here is prepared for a dragon attack. They haven’t been seen in so long, most people thought they didn’t exist.” Keith was among them, until this morning. “Have you seen the town? We’ve barely got a wall to speak of. If that thing left a settlement full of Imperial soldiers in ruins, we don’t stand much of a chance.”

                Keith couldn’t argue. The town didn’t even seem to have a guard patrol set up. If the dragon decided to stop here, it would be a handful of farmers and maybe one archer in the whole town trying to fight it.

                “You’re part of Whiterun, why hasn’t the Jarl sent you some reinforcements?” Shiro looked better after he all but passed out on the first available bed the minute they made it through the door.

                “The damn war. They won’t send us a single soldier because it might be seen by the neighboring holds as a ‘provocation’.”

                Keith caught Shiro muttering something along the lines of, “that’s still going on?” It had only been a year since he’d been deployed to Skyrim, and subsequently vanished. From the reports that came back to the Imperial City, Keith had gathered that the civil war hadn’t improved for either side in that time.

                “News of the dragon attack might change his mind, but the Jarl’s all but sealed off the capital city. You lot would be the best ones to tell him about it.”

                They… didn’t really have anything better to do. And after Hunk’s uncle had let them all stay in his house, and given them food… They could make the trip to Whiterun as soon as they tracked down everyone else.

                “We’ll go ask him to dispatch some guards to the town.” Shiro shuffled over to join them at the table, dropping into the seat next to Keith. He still looked exhausted, despite the fact that he had been sleeping for a good few hours.

                Before he could thank them, Hunk’s uncle jumped to his feet at the sound of a metallic clatter outside. “If that brat and his dog are poking around my forge again...” He was out the door without another word, leaving Keith and Shiro to sit and wonder what had just happened.

                “…so, what happened?” As tactful as always, Keith wasn’t quite sure how else to breach the subject of the past year since Shiro had been dispatched to Skyrim.

                “I wish I could tell you…” Shiro was leaning on the table, pointedly looking straight ahead. “One minute we’re trekking through the Reach to deliver… something, and then… it’s all kind of a blur until you guys broke me out. My head’s still kind of scrambled…”

                “It’s good to have you back.” When Shiro finally met his eyes, he was trying for a smile.

                “We should find the others, let them know that we’re going to the capital.”

 

                When he wasn’t working, there wasn’t usually much else for Hunk to do except visit the inn or the trader across the street. More often than not, he picked the trader across the street. Rax took care of actually running the Riverwood Trader, but Shay could usually be found helping out there as well. Usually he was welcome after an errand to the nearby towns, and Shay’s grandmother would have something cooking as soon as he walked in.

                Today was not one of those days.

                “Oh, Hunk, thank goodness you’re here! Rax, tell him what happened!” Shay was quick to pull Hunk inside the shop, sitting him down at the table across from where Rax was leaning on the counter, looking more disgruntled than usual.

                “If this is about you going to get the claw back, then drop it, Shay. No one is going near that place. It is crawling with bandits and divines know what else.”

                “Wait what happened to your claw?” Everyone in Riverwood knew about the golden claw that was usually displayed on the counter inside the Riverwood Trader. Rax never let that thing out of his sight. It was very much not on the counter now…

                “Some bandits broke in and stole it. By now they are holed up in Bleak Falls Barrow, and nobody is going into that deathtrap to get it back.” The last bit was directed at Shay more than Hunk.

                “We can get it back, Rax! Hunk can help. If you would stop being so stubborn and just try, we could go and get it back from the bandits by tonight.”

                Rax was right about one thing. Nobody went into Bleak Falls Barrow and came out in one piece. Between the bandits’ nest and the traps and the draugr, people only went near that place if they wanted to die. It was a dead end anyway. Whatever rumors of fantastic treasure had spread were nothing but a fairytale and everyone knew that.

                But Hunk did recently come across a band of explorers who managed to survive a dragon attack. After that, some bandits might not be so bad…

                “Maybe I can help,” Hunk offered, bringing Shay’s argument with her brother to a halt. “I might know some guys who could get it back. They’ll probably be heading that direction anyway, I’ll see if they’d be willing to make a stop to get your claw back.”

                “Thank you, Hunk!” Shay all but leaped at Hunk to give him a hug, and it was hard to miss the pointed look she gave her brother.

                “Yes, thank you. It… would mean a lot to have the claw back.” Satisfied with her brother’s thanks (though halfhearted it might be), Shay stood up and started in on her account of everything that had happened since Hunk left for Helgen.

 

_Started: The Golden Claw_

 

                Lance wasn’t sure how he’d ended up with the job of making sure Pidge stayed out of trouble, but he knew that he was already doing a terrible job of it when Hunk had gone to talk to the cute girl inside the town’s only real shop, Keith and Shiro went to talk to Hunk’s uncle, and Pidge was nowhere to be seen. The town was nothing compared to a place like Solitude, or even Whiterun, so there couldn’t be too many places for Pidge to hide.

                Why did they have to be a _stealth_ mage though? Wasn’t just being a mage enough?

                After a bit of asking around, one guy in town said he saw someone who might have been Pidge sneaking towards the inn. The fact that he saw the kid at all was impressive, and Lance made sure to tell him so while he made a run for the inn. Hopefully he could find Pidge before they went somewhere else.

                Sure enough, they found Pidge leaning on the bar, talking alchemy with the barkeep. Lance took the stool next to theirs and only caught the tail end of their conversation with the orc.

                “You don’t care if I use it?”

                “Long as you clean up after yourself. There’s also some ingredients over there to get you started.”

                “Great, I’ll see if I can make that health potion!” Pidge hopped off the stool, and the barkeep was quickly cornered by a man that, Lance would assume, was probably the inn’s owner. He snapped something about the ale going bad, and Lance made a quick note to avoid this place in the future. And he might want to warn Pidge.

                “Uh, what are you doing?”

                Pidge paused in their work, hand poised right above a bowl of… some sort of dust that even Lance could tell wasn’t going into a health potion. “I’m practicing, what does it look like?”

                “Uh huh, and does alchemy practice always include clearing out the inn’s supply of… what is that, Nirnroot?” Lance picked up one of the plants and held it up to the light. “Last I checked, Nirnroot was poisonous.”

                “Only if you don’t treat it correctly,” Pidge grumbled, snatching the leaf back from him. “Alright, you caught me, I’m making an invisibility potion, just don’t tell that guy.”

                “Looks to me like you’re making more than just one.” He picked up some sort of butterfly wing, pale green in color. “He thinks you’re a total novice, right?”

                “It was the only way he’d let me use the lab…”

                “Right…” Pidge held out a hand for the wing, and Lance gingerly handed it over. In a puff of smoke, the liquid in the bowl Pidge was working with faded to a soft cream color before turning deep red. “It was supposed to do that, right?”

                “We could find out.” Pidge emptied the bowl into a small, glass bottle from their bag and held it up to the light. “Looks pretty non-poisonous. Want to try it?”

                “I’ll pass…”

                “Suit yourself.”

                The inn was a pretty small place, with a handful of rooms and a single hearth in the center of the main hall. One guy was getting a little too drunk in the corner, and nobody really seemed to be paying attention to some guy named Sven complaining about one of the mill workers. “So did you just come here to stock up on invisibility potions? What do you even need that many invisibility potions for?”

                Pidge neglected to answer, instead turning their attention back to the alchemy lab and the handful of ingredients they produced from their bag. This potion was quickly thrown together in a puff of black smoke, and it looked almost exactly the same as the last potion Pidge made.

                “Uh, maybe you should cool it on the potions, I think the barkeep is starting to catch on.” Pidge picked up the last potion they had made and turned around to face the approaching orc. Lance glanced at the table expecting a row of bright red, incriminating potions to give away what the mage had been doing, but they had all vanished. Lance hadn’t even noticed Pidge putting them away.

                “This isn’t half bad!” The orc was holding the potion Pidge had given him up to the light, and Pidge was using the opportunity to slip a couple more moth wings into their bag. Lance managed to direct them to the exit before they could loot the whole place.

                “Pidge, we are not bailing you out of jail because you got caught robbing the local inn.”

 

                Even Pidge couldn’t sweet talk the Jarl’s housecarl into letting them speak with the Jarl himself.

                “We have important information that the Jarl needs to hear! We did not spend days walking all the way here, fighting off wolves and bandits just to be told we can’t deliver our message.” Keith was dangerously close to pulling a weapon on the elf, if that’s what it took to make her see sense. “This is a matter of life and death!”

                “I will pass it along when the Jarl is free to listen to it. Until then, the city is closed and the Jarl is not receiving visitors, and I will have to ask you to leave.”

                “By that time, another dragon will probably be attacking!” Lance pointed out.

                “A dragon?” The Jarl finally turned his attention to them, interest piqued by the mention of the dragon attack. “You bring news from Helgen, then?”

                “We barely escaped Helgen with our lives,” Hunk corrected him. “We got out and saw the dragon flying over Riverwood. Those people are defenseless right now. If a dragon attacks them, they’ll be wiped out.”

                “This is a… very delicate situation. I would not advice sending troops that close to Falkreath Hold, sir.”

                “You can’t just leave those people to die!” It took Shiro grabbing his arm before he could draw his sword to keep him from attacking.

                “And I don’t intend to.” The Jarl motioned for his housecarl to stand down. “I will send a _small_ number of soldiers to patrol the town, in case of an attack. Now, as for this news about a dragon, you should talk to my court mage. He’s been researching the dragons’ return for some time now.” It wasn’t… quite a dismissal, but it wasn’t what Keith had been hoping for.

                The court mage was an interesting character. He was clearly invested in his work, if the maps and books strewn about his workstation were anything to go by. Lance, it seemed, had taken the full-time job of keeping Pidge from slipping the poisons and soul gems lying about into her pockets.

                “I do require a certain stone for my research, if you’d all be willing to go and retrieve it for me,” he muttered, looking over his map instead of actually addressing them.

                “But we have news of the dragon attack in Helgen. We came all the way here to tell someone about it.” Keith could literally feel his patience snapping at this point.

                “Yes, yes, dragon attacks, that’s all fine and good, but it’s _already happened_ , you see. I’m interested in what the dragons are returning for. Why now? Where are they going to appear next?” They were all but being pushed out of the room at this point. “I need something called the Dragonstone. It was last mentioned in a text relating to those old ruins outside of Riverwood. Bleak Falls Barrow. Go and get it for me, and I’ll see what I can do about this dragon on the loose.”

                “You know… I did mention that we should stop by Bleak Falls Barrow on the way here.” Hunk was trying, and clearly failing, to keep the underlying _I told you so_ out of his voice. “But this works out great, you know? We can go get the claw, pick up this Dragonstone thing, and then maybe they’ll figure out a way to stop this dragon by then.”

 

_Completed: Before the Storm_

_Started: Bleak Falls Barrow_

               

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was physically painful to write, honestly. I've never, not even once, gone to Whiterun without clearing Bleak Falls Barrow and getting the Dragonstone first. I've come to the conclusion that Keith and I would play Skyrim very differently.


	3. Bleak Falls Barrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the team kills some bandits, re-kills some zombies, and nobody has any ideas about what's going on anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> College is very demanding, but this chapter is like twice as long as the others have been so hopefully that makes up for it.

_Started: Bleak Falls Barrow_

                  “So… how are we supposed to get past them?” Hunk was the first of the group to voice his concerns about the bandits camped out in the ruins. There were probably three of them in the entry hall, but who knew how many more might be crawling around the deeper parts of the burial site.

                  “There are three of them and five of us. I say we just walk in.” Keith already had his sword drawn.

                  “Or we could not provoke the bandits and I’ll just get them from back here.” Lance brandished his bow to support his argument.

                  “Yeah, because they aren’t going to notice you when one of them just drops dead with an arrow sticking out of their skull. If you want stealth, you’re going to need to take them all down before they can notice you.” Pidge regarded the bandits for a moment before turning back to the group. “Sneaking past isn’t an option since _you_ ,” Pidge directed their glare at Hunk, “can’t seem to part with the iron armor.”

                  “You’re one to talk. Those robes aren’t going to stop a breeze, never mind a weapon,” Hunk pointed out, more smugly than was probably appropriate for the given situation.

                  “Look, they can’t take all of us down, so what does it matter if they know we’re here or not?” Keith nearly smacked Lance in the face when he gestured towards the bandits. Lance responded by shoving Keith out of his way, and nearly pushing the guy over.

                  “Guys, be quiet, they’re going to hear us!” Hunk looked like he was about to turn around and go home if they didn’t pick something soon.

                  “We’re better off catching them by surprise, and charging them with weapons drawn is just going to give them time to attack us back,” Lance argued. “I don’t want to get attacked back.”

                  “They’re bandits, Lance, we’re probably going to be attacked back!” Keith looked like he was ready to forget all of them and charge the bandits himself.

                  “Enough, all of you.” Shiro was rubbing at his temples, already cursing the headache he knew he’d be fighting today. “Keith, Hunk, go get their attention, take them down if you can. Pidge, you sneak around while they’re distracted and take them out before they can run further in and warn their buddies. Lance, stay back and give them some cover fire.”

                  “What about you?” Pidge spoke up while the others backed off.

                  “I’m still figuring that out.” Shiro had been unconscious or drowsy for most of their time in Riverwood and hadn’t thought to grab a weapon. They hadn’t spent much time in Whiterun, and the five of them didn’t have much gold between them, so buying one hadn’t really been an option. Shiro wasn’t even sure if the mechanical prosthetic that he’d woken up with in Helgen would be able to hold a weapon well enough to fight with it. It honestly looked like someone had ripped the arm off of a dwarven centurion and found a way to attach it to him.

                  He was trying not to think too hard about it.

                  Keith stabbed the first one straight through their worn leather armor, which must have seen better days to yield so easily to an average iron sword. The bandit slumped almost immediately. Their short-lived scream quickly devolved into a sort of gurgling whimper.  While Keith pulled his sword free of the dead body, Hunk blocked a second bandit that was trying to attack from his side. Before Keith could take that one down, an arrow lodged itself neatly in the bandit’s eye. They crumpled to the ground, and Lance called, “You’re welcome!” from his spot on the other side of the room.

                  The third one was on their knees, clawing at their throat as blood dripped down their chin. Pidge was standing over them, wiping off one of their daggers. “I looted the trunk over there while they weren’t looking. No claw and no fancy rock, but I did find some armor if any of you want it.”

                  When the bandit collapsed, twitching slightly but otherwise pretty much dead, Pidge scooped a handful of gold coins out of the bandit’s pockets and put them in their own. Nobody really wanted to question them about it at this point.

                  “There’s a dead end if we keep going, so either we find the bandits, and the claw, or they find us. My guess is that this Dragonstone thing is past the door at the end of the tomb.” Hunk was drawing a diagram in the air as he spoke. “Otherwise I’m pretty sure someone would have found it by now.”

                  “So how do we get the door open?” Keith asked.

                  “It’s some kind of old Nordic puzzle lock, and nobody’s been able to figure it out. Not that, you know, many people have been able to get to it to try, what with all the bandits that like to hole up in here. And the spiders, I’ve heard that there are some really big spiders in here.” Hunk was speaking over Lance, who was already groaning at the thought of having to deal with more frostbite spiders.

                  “Those things are everywhere and I am sick of them!”

                  “Oh! And the draugr. Can’t forget about the draugr. This _is_ an ancient Nordic burial site.” Hunk nodded to himself, like this was a sufficient explanation.

                  “Hold on, I think there’s someone up ahead.” Pidge stopped short at the end of one of the corridors, peering into the room up ahead. There was a metallic _clank_ before a pained cry rang out. “Well, that takes care of that…”

                  There was a fresh corpse lying on the ground next to a lever set in the floor. The body was covered in little darts, which, by the look of the poor guy who’d set off the trap, were probably laced with poison. Shiro noticed the small holes lining the wall near the gate blocking the only other exit in the room before any of the others did. “They really don’t want anyone disturbing their dead…”

                  “Ooh, I’ve seen these before, when we were scouting out an old cave system a while back.” Lance pointed out the decorative pillars positioned along one side of the room. “Those things move, and you have to figure out which direction they go to unlock the gate. There’s usually some sort of clue to follow, too…” He turned in a circle, looking up at the walls before pointing out some decorative emblems mounted almost perfectly above the pillars. “Yeah, like those!”

                  “I only count two of those, and there are three pillars,” Pidge pointed out. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not too keen about death by poison dart trap.”

                  Lance was already rotating one of the pillars so that it matched the first of the designs mounted on the wall above the gate. “It’s around here somewhere, we just have to find it.” Satisfied that the first of the pillars was in place, he skipped the second and started working on the third. “There’s a spot where it _should_ be, so just… look around for it while I fix these. I think this one’s stuck—whoa! Okay, that works.”

                  The spot on the far wall where the last clue to unlocking this gate was supposed to be was still ragged enough to make it out against the age-worn walls of the tomb. There was plenty of rubble lying around the chamber, and whatever plate had been mounted up there had to be buried under part of it. The ground shook slightly, and everyone turned to see Pidge coughing in the middle of a cloud of dust. Some of the rubble had been dislodged, and there were scorch marks marring the floor where Pidge was hunched over, trying to breathe. “Sorry, didn’t mean to do that.”

                  They had the right idea. Shiro figured that finding this thing would probably involve moving a lot of the fallen stone. Maybe they could just… try a less explosive method. This place was pretty old, and Shiro didn’t really want to test how well ancient Nordic architecture could stand against thousands of years of weathering.

                  “Hey, I think I found it! Hunk, give me a hand here!”

                  Hunk and Lance managed to uncover a metal plate that was battered by the rubble, but still decipherable. Lance went to move the last of the pillars, and everyone held their breath while Pidge flipped the lever, a warding spell summoned just in case Lance was wrong. When the gate opened, filling the room with a metallic grinding sound, everyone hurried to get out of the chamber.

                  Hunk was right about the draugr. There were plenty of them. Shiro briefly considered the idea that the gate hadn’t been to keep graverobbers _out_ , but to keep the draugr _in_. They weren’t particularly bright, but they were surprisingly durable for undead creatures that had been decaying for divines knew how long.

                  Shiro had never considered unarmed combat to be useful for anything but a tavern brawl, but looting a sword off of the bandits had proven more trouble than it was worth. His mechanical arm was difficult to maneuver on its own, and he couldn’t get a grip on any weapon he tried with it. His other arm wasn’t his dominant one, and trying to use a weapon was just awkward and something better trained when his life wasn’t at stake. He couldn’t just leave the others to fight on their own, though…

                  He wasn’t sure how he did it, but when one of the draugr bashed Keith with a shield and sent him reeling back, Shiro felt a tingly sort of energy in his shoulder before a white-hot bolt of electricity shot towards the draugr. Shiro had never studied magic. He and Matt, before they’d been deployed to Skyrim, had always made fun of Matt’s little sister, Katie, for it, all in good fun. She’d kicked their asses in more sparring matches than either of them cared to admit. He’d been on the receiving end of Katie’s Sparks more times than he could count, so he liked to think that he could recognize a lightning spell when he saw one.

                  “Why didn’t you mention that you can use magic?” Hunk asked, dislodging his weapon from where it had still been embedded in the last draugr’s chest. “That would have been really helpful to know a while ago!”

                  “I… can’t? I’ve never…” Shiro trailed off as a few more sparks crackled along the surface of the dwarven prosthetic.

                  “Well, at least you’ve got a weapon now,” Pidge commented, already following Keith down a corridor that led further into the ruins.

                 

                  Keith felt it more than anything else. It was like a vibration in his skull, more powerful than the blood rushing in his ears and his heartbeat reverberating throughout his entire body. It came in short bursts, almost like… a chant of some kind? He couldn’t make out any words, but there was a definite rhythm to the syllables that kept repeating, over and over, in groups of three. “What’s that noise?” he muttered, more to himself than anything.

                  “I don’t hear anything,” Lance replied anyway. The others were all shaking their heads or shrugging.

                  “You don’t hear that weird chanting?” As they walked further into what looked like an expansive burial chamber, the chanting only got louder. The vibrations were stronger, too, and seemed to be making the ground shake beneath his feet. The others were looking at him like he was crazy. Maybe he was hallucinating? That spider might have done more damage than he thought.

                  “The only thing I hear are some waterfalls.” Hunk pointed over his shoulder to one of the many waterfalls cascading down the walls. “Let’s just focus on finding that stone thing so we can get out of here.”

                  The sounds were getting even louder as they got closer to the raised stone platform at the far end of the hall. It was like the wind was howling, trying to drown out the voices that only became more insistent upon being heard. Keith couldn’t feel any wind blowing in the burial chamber. When they finally reached the stone coffin positioned in front of the far wall, the others spread out to start looking for the Dragonstone. Pidge was rifling through an ornate chest positioned near the far wall, and the others were clearing out all the little hiding places that someone might conceivably hide an important rock in. Keith should have been helping them, but a soft, white glow out of the corner of his eye had caught his attention.

                  The far wall had an inscription of some kind carved into it, and a few of the symbols were glowing. It got brighter the closer he walked, and he was starting to feel a light breeze blowing on his face. “Guys, check this out.”

                  “What are we supposed to be looking at?” Shiro came to stand next to Keith to see what he was pointing at.

                  “The wall is glowing! How can you not see this?” The whole group was watching him like he was going to snap at any second. “You guys can’t see it?”

                  “It’s probably just an epitaph for whoever’s buried here,” Pidge pointed out. “This _is_ a tomb that we’re desecrating right now.”

                  “Don’t remind me,” Hunk groaned.

                  “Yeah, and with very few results.” Lance spun around in a circle, arms gesturing to the entire hall. “How do we even know that this Dragonstone is still here? This place is huge! It’s gonna take us all day to search the whole room.”

                  Keith found it easier to tune out Lance’s complaints when he had strange chanting to focus on instead. He couldn’t just be hallucinating. If it was something in the tomb, wouldn’t they all be hallucinating? There was something going on with this wall. That inscription was important, somehow. It felt… powerful, even if he couldn’t so much as recognize the language it was written in.

                  His vision was starting to blur at the edges, everything except for that glowing word softening as he got close enough to touch the carvings. There was definitely a strong gust of wind coming from somewhere. He brushed his fingertips against one of the symbols, and it felt like he’d been hit by some kind of lightning magic. He staggered back, clutching his head with one hand while it threatened to split open. Everything went dark, except for that one glowing word. It was glowing a lot brighter now, burning itself into his brain so he couldn’t forget it if he wanted to.

                  “…th? Keith!” When his vision came back to him, Shiro was gripping his arms, and Keith realized how close he was to falling over. He tried to shake the dizzy feeling out of his head, and only succeeded in making the room spin around him. The voices had quieted down. Now the only sounds in the grotto were the waterfalls and the concerned voices of the rest of his group.

                  “What just happened?” Lance asked. “What was all that glowy stuff?”

                  “Was this a trap? Is a dragon going to show up and attack us again?” Hunk was shaking, looking frantically around the hall.

                  “What was that spell?” Pidge demanded, getting a little too close to Keith’s face. “What kind of magic was that?”

                  “I… I don’t know!” Keith wasn’t sure he liked the way they were looking at him. He managed to break free of Shiro’s grip, trying to get some space. Nothing else in the room had really changed, except the wall wasn’t glowing anymore. He still couldn’t read the inscription, except—

                  _Force_. The word that had been glowing was… different than the others. He could read it, understand it. It looked just like the other words engraved on the wall, but, somehow, he could pick this word out among all of them. Like it was more important than the others.

                  A crash echoed through the room, and a few of the group yelped at the sudden break in the quiet. They all turned towards the source: a single hand, clawing at the stone lid of the coffin that they had for the most part ignored. It seemed to have… punched through the stone. It looked like another draugr, though how this one was able to rip apart a stone slab like a piece of wet paper was beyond any of their knowledge. “We’ve fought plenty of these guys today. One more won’t hurt,” Shiro tried to assure the group. Everyone was drawing their weapons, so Keith did the same. They could figure out what had just happened after the undead monster was dead again.

                  Pidge shot a blast of fire at it as soon as it managed to start climbing out of the coffin, and Lance had an arrow embedded in its skull when its feet hit the ground. A bolt of lightning struck it in the chest before it could get very far. The only problem was that this thing was barely fazed by their attacks. It didn’t even seem to notice when charred bits of rotten skin fell off as it charged Keith, greatsword drawn and poised for an attack. Keith was ready to charge it, use its slower reaction time to his advantage, when Hunk bashed it from the side and knocked it off balance, if only for a second so that Keith could attack without having to worry about the thing fighting back.

                  He wasn’t prepared for the draugr to yell at him.

                  Keith staggered back, trying to get his bearings while waiting for the room to stop spinning again. Shiro and Hunk were fighting the thing up close, while Pidge and Lance fired at it from behind. Their only option was really to just overpower it. They had five people, it only had one. They could do this.

                  Keith got close enough to stab at the draugr right as Shiro punched it, prosthetic crackling with energy. It left a blackened mark on the draugr’s jaw, matching the various spots where Pidge had hit it with their fire magic. There were gashes all over its body that weren’t bleeding, from where Lance and Hunk had managed to hit it. A few of Lance’s arrows were still stuck in the draugr’s rotting flesh. The worst part was its eyes. They were just empty sockets, but looking at them felt like the monster was staring into your soul.

                  “If you don’t want to catch on fire, get out of there!” Pidge only gave them a few seconds to move before an explosion shook the cavern and the draugr was set alight, bright orange flames licking at the animated corpse and blackening whatever skin was left hanging on its skeleton. It made one last effort to charge the nearest one of them, which happened to be Keith. Right before it collapsed into a pile of smoldering flesh and bones, Keith stabbed at it and managed to pierce its skull with his sword. It had to be dead after that.

                  “Nice shot, Pidge!” Lance dropped down from wherever he had climbed up to, landing right next to Keith. “Wow, that thing did _not_ want to die.”

                  “What’s that thing?” Shiro nudged the draugr’s remains with his foot, moving the ancient armor out of the way to reveal a few objects lying in the pile. Pidge scooped up the handful of gold coins with little to no regard for the fact that they were grabbing at stuff _inside a rotting corpse_. Lance was a little more careful about dislodging the stone that was stuck underneath the thing’s leg.

                  “Is this the Dragonstone?” He held it up to the light, noting the inscription on the rock. “It’s a stone alright.”

                  “Whatever it is, we should get out of here before anything else shows up,” Hunk insisted. “Or before Keith almost passes out again after doing some weird glowy tricks.”

                  “Whoa, what ‘weird glowy tricks’?” There were those _looks_ again. Like they all felt bad for him, or something.

                  “Right before the draugr attacked, there was this loud… shout? I guess? And you were standing there, glowing. It was kind of creepy,” Lance explained.

                  “It sounded just like whatever that draugr yelled while we were fighting him. That spell that knocked you back.” Pidge almost looked… jealous? “I’ve never heard a spell like that before, but it can’t be anything else…”

                  “You looked ready to collapse after it stopped.” Shiro’s expression was worse than any of the others. “And then you snapped out of it. You don’t remember?”

                  “Everything went dark except for that one word that I told you was glowing,” Keith muttered. “I… don’t really know what happened.”

                  There was a moment where none of them spoke (and how could they, really?) before the ground shifted above them and everyone seemed to remember that getting out of the tomb was a good idea.

 

                  Riverwood was the closest town to rest in after the battle, and as soon as the claw was back in Shay’s hands, they all trudged over to the inn to see about getting a room for the night.

                  The owner was nowhere to be found, but the barkeep seemed to be running the place in his absence. He had no problem getting a band of exhausted adventurers a room for the night, and he even offered to throw in a bottle of ale, on the house. Lance was reluctant to accept, and promptly snatched the bottle from Shiro as soon as the barkeep was out of sight. It was out the window before anyone could ask for an explanation.

                  “Today has been… weird,” Keith commented, eyeing Lance with suspicion while the others got settled.

                  “You didn’t want to drink that,” Lance assured him. “Trust me.”

                  “O…kay?”

                  “What about you? You have no idea what any of that glowing and shouting stuff was about?” Lance seemed to have caught the others’ attention with this, because they were all crowding around Keith before he could even formulate an answer.

                  “I don’t know,” he admitted. He couldn’t look at all of their expectant stares when he had nothing to offer them, so he settled for picking at a loose thread on his sleeve. “Like I said, I kind of blacked out except for that glowing spot on the wall.”

                  “It might be related to the dragon attack. Wasn’t it shouting a bunch of stuff when it showed up?” Hunk pointed at Keith and added, “Wasn’t that right after you got to Helgen?”

                  “It landed right before I got my head chopped off, yeah. It was a weird day.” Keith ran a hand through his hair, fingers catching on the knots he hadn’t even realized were forming.

                  “How, exactly, did you get sentenced to execution?” Pidge was the only one who would say it, but going by the looks everyone else was giving him, they all wanted to know.

                  “Okay, look, I came from Cyrodiil because there was this… I don’t know, a prophecy or something? It wasn’t complete, but it came from Skyrim and I just felt this… weird energy that told me to follow it. So I did, and I… might have accidentally crossed the border a lot sooner than I meant to, and the Imperials guarding the border thought I was a Stormcloak so they arrested me and I almost died.” He finished his explanation with an unhappy huff, glaring at the floor. “I don’t really like to think about it, okay?”

                  “Wait, you just followed a random prophecy, that wasn’t even complete, into a whole other country, just… on a whim?” Lance shook his head. “That’s… you’re joking, you did not actually…”

                  “This prophecy,” Shiro interrupted, “what was it about?”

                  “Some sort of arrival. The guy wasn’t very specific, kept rambling about towers and some big arrival. Something was supposed to show up in Skyrim on the day I got here. I was going to try to find out what it was. Maybe it was that dragon.” Keith shrugged, trying not to consider the fact that the arrival might not have been referring to the dragon, but someone else who happened to show up in Helgen that day.

                  “People have been trading legends about the return of the dragons since the Merethic Era. My uncle used to tell us stories about it when we were kids, to try and scare us into eating our vegetables or going to bed. _Dragons like to eat little kids that stay up too late. You’d better get to bed before they come back!_ That kind of thing. Nobody actually bought that stuff until… well, until one came back…” Hunk trailed off, fidgeting like he still hadn’t quite come to terms with the fact that the dragons had very much returned.

                  “Yeah, my parents used those stories on me and my little siblings all the time.” Lance was laughing now.

                  “Well, they aren’t really legends anymore, are they?” Pidge sounded almost… put out? “That dragon was pretty damn real.”

 

                  They arrived back at the castle to find the court mage speaking with a tall, armored figure who seemed pretty intent on not leaving any identifying features to be seen. They dressed like an assassin, but they didn’t bear the emblem of any known guilds. The team could all agree that a run-in with the Dark Brotherhood was the last thing they needed right now.

                  The court mage seemed unconcerned, talking animatedly about an old book that he had opened on his worktable. “I’m telling you, I’ve got reason to believe that this text is First-Era, at the earliest. All it would take to prove it is to cross-reference a few later texts. This is the biggest breakthrough in our research into the dragons in years.”

                  “My employers will be pleased with your progress,” the figure stated. They spoke with a no-nonsense kind of tone, but the court mage didn’t seem fazed by it.

                  “Oh, but I’ll have something that your employers will love even more as soon as—” He turned around and noticed Keith and the others, face breaking into a delighted smile that only put Keith a little bit on-edge. “Right on time. You’ve retrieved the Dragonstone, correct?”

                  “Yeah, and we almost died trying to get it. A lot. I hope you’re happy,” Lance grumbled while Keith handed over the rock. He’d tried to decipher anything on it on the way back, but it was like trying to read through water. He felt like she _should_ be able to understand it, but it wouldn’t stop moving so that he could actually read it.

                  “So it was there after all…” the armored person mused.

                  “Oh, yes, you see, Kolivan here was the one to find the Dragonstone’s location, and then you went to retrieve it. Everything worked out. Now, I just need some time to decipher the stone, and we should have a working map of the dragon burial sites across Skyrim.” The court mage was already staring intently at the Dragonstone, and Keith had half a mind to tell him not to waste his time.

                  “I would like a copy when you’ve deciphered it.” The way they framed the request made it sound more like a demand, but Kolivan didn’t stick around long enough for anyone to question it.

                  “Kolivan… I’ve heard that name before…” Lance muttered.

                  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’ve met them before… Who…?” Hunk didn’t have a chance to finish asking his question before the jarl’s housecarl came running into the room.

                  “You may get your wish, to see a dragon up close, Farengar.” She turned to address Keith and the others. “The jarl has requested you lot meet him upstairs. A dragon has just been sighted attacking the western watchtower.”

 

_Completed: Bleak Falls Barrow_

_Started: Dragon Rising_

                 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to come talk to me about this or my other AUs, you can find me at [my tumblr](hashtag-anthems.tumblr.com).


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